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Humans may be to blame for a big earthquake in South Korea

SOUTH KOREA’S most damaging earthquake in a century may have been caused by humans. Two teams argue the quake was the result of pumping water underground.

Several dozen people were hurt in Pohang by the magnitude-5.5 quake in November last year. Now it seems the quake was no more than 2 kilometres from where water was pumped underground to extract geothermal energy, implying this caused it (Science, doi.org/cnzn, doi.org/cnzp).

Since 2014, seismologists have used a formula to estimate the maximum earthquake size such action could cause. It is applied to geothermal energy schemes and to fracking to extract oil …